


do it (lie) for him

by lavandula_skiess



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Drug Addiction, Feels, How Do I Tag, I Tried, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Harm, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 07:22:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19718917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavandula_skiess/pseuds/lavandula_skiess
Summary: “Clearly not, because I haven’t seen the two of you sober since February!”/or/Tony and Bucky have their own issues, but Bucky can't watch Tony tear himself apart.





	do it (lie) for him

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all! This is my very first fic! I thought I would start with a one-shot so here it is :) if anyone ends up reading this, I would love to know what you think :)) I'll probably be posting a few more one-shots and then moving into some chapter things, so if you like this, there's more angst to come

Tony was slumped in the bathtub. He stared emptily at the ceiling, eyes red and glassy. The blunt in his hand drooped ash onto the tile. Bucky gazed at Tony’s reflection in the mirror. He looked stunningly distorted, like a muted Malevich portrait. 

“Where are we?” Tony muttered, flopping his wrist towards the door. He lifted his head off the rim of the bathtub about an inch, but it thudded back onto the porcelain. “Buck, I don’t know where we are,” he slurred. “This isn’t my hot tub.” 

“No, We…” He thought they might be in a vintage DS game. No, that couldn’t be right. “...We’re at Clint’s,” Bucky said finally. 

“No we aren’t, none of this is real,” Tony slurred, lolling his head around. His brown eyes were blown wide. They reminded Bucky of a deer in headlights, the way Tony was looking around but seemingly paralyzed. “I’m literally dreaming right now,” Tony whined, squeezing his eyes shut. “Bucky, help, I can’t wake up.”

“Tony, take, um… just breathe, okay?” Tony was starting to gasp for breath, and he was scratching the crisscrossing scars on his wrist vigorously. 

“Stop, Tony, I’m gonna call Rhodey to take us home, don’t do that, leave your cuts alone,” Bucky muttered, pulling out his phone. 

“No, babe, don’t, he’ll see my arm,” Tony said, but his mouth didn’t seem to be moving, and his voice was edged with humming static. A picture popped into Bucky’s mind of Tony with a beehive for a head, and he almost laughed. But… Shit, Tony needed Rhodey. 

“Honey…” Bucky drawled, “he’s trying to help you.”

Tony let out a swirling, wrecked sigh. “He’ll take my blades again.”

“Maybe that’s good,” Bucky said quietly. He tried to focus through the beehive in his head, snd the fact that the bathroom was a pixelated purple around the edges.

“You do it.”

“And that’s why I want you to stop.” 

Tony slumped back against the bathtub, suddenly drained. His eyelids drifted shut as he put his blunt out on his collarbone. 

Bucky heard the hiss but his legs felt too heavy to help his boyfriend and his fingers had turned to stone and merged with the porcelain. Fucking useless. 

XXX 

They were in Steve’s car. Tony’s head was in Bucky’s lap and their fingers were laced together. Steve had been sighing through his nose and throwing them judgemental glances in the rearview mirror the entire drive. Bucky wasn’t naive enough to think that Steve didn’t know that they were both cooked out of their minds, but he didn’t care. Steve had been raised too well to bring it up, along with the scabs on Tony’s neck and the cuts on his arm. They had been hidden under one of Bucky’s old hoodies when they arrived, but it had been discarded somewhere in the house while Bucky and one of Clint’s soccer friends had been making a bong out of a water bottle. No one at the party would notice the lines anyways, intoxicated as they were.

Steve pulled up outside of Bucky’s apartment. “Call me when you get Tony to bed,” he said, glaring straight ahead, not making eye contact. 

Bucky nodded slowly, glancing at Tony in the backseat. He was picking absentmindedly at a burn in the crook of his elbow. Bucky saw a tear run down his cheek, glinting in the fading light of the street lamps as it traced his cheekbone. A tiny diamond blazing a trail of sorrow. 

“And don’t let him do that shit, ok? You’re his boyfriend, you're meant to be helping him.”

Bucky wasn’t sure if Steve was talking about the cutting or the drugs, but it didn’t matter. He was right, Bucky shouldn’t let Tony do those things, but how could he tell Tony to stop when Bucky himself could barely suffer a minor inconvenience without slicing open his thighs or smoking himself shitless? Steve didn’t know that, though. And Bucky intended to keep it that way, which is why he stayed away from his arms. He couldn’t stand to even think about the look on Steve’s face if he knew. If he saw. 

He couldn’t let Steve find out. 

It was a slippery slope, but he was fine. He would beg Tony to quit, promise they would quit together, and he would just have to be more careful. Find somewhere new to cut. Only smoke at night. Something.

Because he loved Tony too much to watch him tear himself apart. 

XXX

Bucky was barely able to drag Tony into the elevator, and as soon as his boyfriend slumped on the bedframe-less mattress of his studio apartment, Bucky pulled out his phone, holed up in the bathroom, and called Steve. 

“Buck, I’m sorry, but Tony needs help,” Steve said, without preamble. 

Bucky sighed and dragged his hand through his hair. “I’m doing my best, Steve.”

“Clearly not, because I haven’t seen the two of you sober since February!” 

Bucky paused. It was true. And Tony went even harder than Bucky did, snorting five lines to Bucky’s three, drinking an entire bottle of vodka without a chaser, even going up to the community college to mooch ket off the frat kids. And Bucky understood. Being sober hurt. But it hurt even more to know that his boyfriend was slicing himself apart every night. And Bucky had yet to do shit. 

“Okay,” Bucky whispered. 

“Okay, what?” Steve snapped. 

Bucky thought about the lines on Tony’s arm. The way he sighed and closed his eyes as he put out a cigarette on his skin; how he tasted like mint and weed as his tongue swept the inside of Bucky’s mouth. His face when he smoked, focused and softly lit by the flame of his lighter; his full lips curled tight around the joint; how he sucked so hard it seemed he could finish a blunt in three hits; how he held the smoke in his lungs for what seemed like an impossible extent of time; the slope of his neck as he leaned his head back to exhale straight up; how his charcoal lashes gracefully drifted downwards as he waited for the high to hit him. The beads of blood that poked through his skin when he ran his thumb over a blade to see if it was sharp enough to do the damage he craved.

Bucky knew what he needed to do. 

“Bucky?”

He hung up. 

XXX

Later that night, he woke up to the sound of Tony’s footsteps. He heard Tony rummaging around, and then the flick of a lighter. He listened to Tony smoke for a few minutes, and then he heard one last exhale, and the familiar hiss of the cigarette on skin. 

He can quit. You have to make him quit. 

Bucky struggled to keep his breathing deep and rhythmic as he thought about what he had to do. He didn’t want to lie to Tony but Bucky really deserved the pain. He needed it. Not like Tony, who was beautiful and funny and smart, and the best thing in Bucky’s life. 

He had to lie. 

Tony shuffled back towards the bed and draped his arm over his boyfriend, his chest pressed into Bucky’s back. 

Bucky listened to Tony’s breathing until it became heavy and even. 

He closed his eyes. 

Do it for him.


End file.
